{"id":1151,"date":"2015-07-02T10:18:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T10:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/?p=1151"},"modified":"2015-07-02T10:18:48","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T10:18:48","slug":"my-national-man-of-mystery-nmom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/2015\/07\/02\/my-national-man-of-mystery-nmom\/","title":{"rendered":"My National Man of Mystery (NMOM)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fireworks\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My husband spends an inordinate amount of time working on national security cases in Ottawa. His legal work is \u201ctop secret\u201d which means that he can\u2019t even tell me the location of his office. I try to probe like any self-respecting wife about what he does far away from home (and with whom)\u2014but his stock responses are, \u201cThat\u2019s confidential,\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s classified, \u201cor \u201cI can neither confirm nor deny.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have come to refer to my husband as my national man of mystery (NMOM).<\/p>\n

This week, I decided to come check things out for myself. I thought it would be fun for NMOM and me to spend some quality time in the nation\u2019s capital. I arrived at the stunning Chateau Laurier where NMOM was staying. He met me in the lobby and we walked over to the concierge to obtain an extra room key.<\/p>\n

NMOM to the concierge: Hello. I had mentioned that someone would be joining me for a few nights.<\/p>\n

Concierge (looking at me with a twinkle in her eye): And, would this be that <\/em>someone?<\/p>\n

I felt like I needed to justify who I was, lest she thought I was NMOM\u2019s mistress\u2014or worse. I wanted her to know that I was a good girl, here on legitimate spousal business. But saying something like, \u201cYes, I am so happy to be joining my husband<\/em> in your splendid hotel\u201d just sounded needy.<\/p>\n

Then it occurred to me, that even if I had joked that I was NMOM\u2019s mistress, the concierge would have looked me up and down and said, \u201cDarlin\u2019, those grey roots, and sensible shoes aren\u2019t exactly what mistress dreams are made of.\u201d No, I don\u2019t look like anything other than a middle-aged wife.<\/p>\n

But while I may not look it, I\u2019ve been feeling rather mistress-like these past few days. Waking up in a King-sized bed with crisp sheets, starting the day with delicate salmon crepes and perfectly dissected grapefruit, and having the entire day to myself while NMOM disappears into the national security trenches.<\/p>\n

When NMOM emerges at the end of the day, he wines and dines me at his favourite restaurants, and leads me along the Rideau canal for romantic evening walks. I don\u2019t think I am telling tales out of school when I say there were fireworks before bed. (It was Canada Day after all, and we watched the most magical display from the terrace of the hotel.)<\/p>\n

While this week has been a tremendous amount of fun, it is time to extricate myself from NMOM\u2019s life here. I came for a glimpse, a peek into his world that is separate from mine. But I don\u2019t want to be enmeshed in it. I like that that my NMOM has a double life that is mysterious. It adds to the intrigue.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I drive home alone.<\/p>\n

Photo credit-Flickr\/Zhu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My husband spends an inordinate amount of time working on national security cases in Ottawa. His legal work is \u201ctop secret\u201d which means that he can\u2019t even tell me the location of his office. I try to probe like any self-respecting wife about what he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,49],"tags":[188,189,26,74],"class_list":["post-1151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-holidaysspecial-occassions","tag-canada-day","tag-ottawa","tag-relationships","tag-romance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3B2G4-iz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}